first person to touch the ground loses
by danahscott
Summary: In another life, she could have been happy. But that's not the life she gets. So in this life, Octavia destroys. (A rumination on Octavia Blake.)


From the very beginning, she knows she is unwanted. Her mother never says so, of course, and Bellamy wouldn't even let her think it, but who would purposefully have a second child in a world where you'd be killed just for giving birth?

She has a lot of time to think while she's under the floor, and Octavia is nine years old when she starts to believe that she's just an aberration. A mistake. A glitch in the universe's coding. Of course, those aren't the words that pop into her head exactly, not yet anyway. All she has is the darkness, her raggedy stuffed animal and the sense that she is wrong, wrong, wrong.

 **-::-::-::-::-::-**

She is twelve and she still wants to play lilypads all the time. Even though Bellamy gives a little exasperated sigh each time she asks, he always plays. He always lets her win. The games keep getting shorter and shorter as he "accidentally" touches the ground sooner and sooner. Even then, Octavia likes the feeling of victory.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She is fifteen and she wants to go to a dance and her brother wants nothing more than to make her happy. It's a recipe for disaster. In another life, she gets to dance with a nice boy without wearing a mask. That isn't the life she gets now, though, and in the end, it doesn't matter. That's the last night of her childhood. Even after she's discovered, they throw her in solitary. She sees nothing except her own face staring back at her and wonders what it's like to hear the voice of someone she doesn't know.

-::-::-::-::-::-

And then, one day she is sitting in a dropship and she is plummeting towards the ground, and her heart is beating so fast, faster than it ever has, and maybe this is it. Lights out. End of story. But she's headed towards something massive, and there's a part of her, larger than she'd like to admit, that's giddy with excitement.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Her brother's arms around her feel familiar and sturdy and comforting. In another life, she never has to lose that. But in that life, she never gets to fully understand how nice it feels to have it back. And then, all of sudden a lever is pulled and there's light, trees, the smell of air and the sound of the wind blowing through the trees. Her brother is grinning, prodding her forward. Octavia takes the first step.

-::-::-::-::-::-

The first one to touch the ground loses.

-::-::-::-::-::-

It's her first time being around actual people, and there's so much to learn. Right out of the gate, she flirts with the boy with the long hair. _Hey, Spacewalker. Rescue me next._ She loves her big brother, but she ignores his warnings. She stands in the river half-dressed and smiles at the feeling of water sloshing around her ankles. She's mauled by some sort of fish pretty quickly, but it's okay.

She makes a new friend. His name is Jasper. He's nice and he's funny and he's different than anything she's ever known - because all she's ever known is solitude. Her first day on the ground is warm and forgiving. And then her new friend gets a spear in her chest.

She doesn't mean to, but she learns.

-::-::-::-::-::-

It doesn't take long before they all go to war. And she is already surrounded by so much destruction. Atom, the boy who showed her the glowing butterflies, who gave her her first kiss, is torn up from the inside by gas sent to kill them all. Her new friend spends days screaming, and her brother wants to kill him for it. There is no floating down here, there aren't even any rules, and yet people keep dying and dying and dying and there's nothing she can do about it.

-::-::-::-::-::-

And then she falls and hits her head and wakes up in a strange man's cave. She watches her brother torture him, feeling blackness clawing at her insides. But in the end, the strange man lives and he has a name. Lincoln. When Octavia kisses him for the first time, she knows that there is finally something in this world that is truly and completely hers. No one can take that away.

-::-::-::-::-::-

They make plans to run, to find a new shore on a different patch of earth and live out the rest of their days there. In another life, they make it. It is a softer life, a gentle place for Octavia to land, but there still comes a time when it is not enough for her. And in another life, the poison from the arrow ends up killing her. Both of those might have been happier endings than what she ended up getting.

Instead, she meets a woman named Indra and that woman is the beginning of her destiny. She had Lincoln, true, but now she has something to fight for. It feels good to be a warrior. It feels like being part of something. Everyone is so obsessed with their people. But she was denied the right to be one of Skaikru the moment she was born. So she'll become something else.

Indra and Lincoln are her people. Bellamy is her people. And no one - no one can take that away.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Until they do. Until Bellamy lets someone shoot Indra and she watches Pike put a bullet in Lincoln's head and the blackness that she's been pushing away all this time finally consumes her. Nothing is sacred. Everything is falling apart. It doesn't matter that Bellamy is sorry. It doesn't matter that he tries to stop it. When she punches him, his jaw feels solid against her fist. It doesn't matter that the blood spilling out of his nose and mouth is the same blood running through her veins. Because it's then that she realizes he will always be around for her to hate. And there is nothing she could do to him to make him hate her back.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She is stumbling in the dark. _I'm not Trikru. I'm not Skaikru. I'm nothing._

 _You're one of the 100._

In another life, she hears him. In another life, she comes crying into his arms, she lets herself fall apart, understands how people make mistakes, but realizes there will always be something terrible and beautiful that bonds her to these people forever. But in this life, it is Octavia against the world, and either she doesn't see the hand reaching out for her or she doesn't want to take it.

In the end, she doesn't really hear him. Not even when he kills his mother for her. Six years later, in his heart of hearts, Monty will wish that he had just let Octavia die instead. There are some things that can never be fixed.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She learns what it means to kill. She likes the way it feels. Octavia has already died a thousand deaths, so she will take a thousand lives.

-::-::-::-::-::-

There's a part of her that wants to see how far she can push Bellamy. There's a part of her that wonders how long he'll take it from her before he pushes back. When she realizes he never will, she just goes in harder. He's her brother, and in her mind, all he's done is let her down.

-::-::-::-::-::-

One night, when her brother is trying to figure how to fix what he broke, he says, "I made a promise. My sister, my responsibility."

Octavia is a warrior now. She has blood on her hands and war paint on her face and it is armor. "That's not true anymore," she says. "I release you from it."

His eyes are pleading. "I don't want to be released."

But she just turns away.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Her pain is so deep and her heart is almost completely hardened. Ilian isn't Lincoln, but he's a warm body to press up against and Octavia doesn't want to be alone. The rain is pouring down and it's acid and she is about to fling herself into it when his arms wrap around her torso and yank her back into the cave. Not even death belongs to her.

-::-::-::-::-::-

And then, redemption. Reconciliation. She becomes the savior of Skaikru and the savior of all. She forgives Bellamy - because he needs her forgiveness. And she tries, she really tries to create something Lincoln would be proud of. Wonkru. A place where it's not a matter of my people or your people. She tells her big brother she loves him and he doesn't hear her, but that doesn't matter because she's going back under the ground. Back under the floor. But this time, she's in charge, and she's not hiding anymore.

-::-::-::-::-::-

What happens down there isn't Octavia's fault. Nothing she's done is her fault. She was kept under the floor her whole life, she was cast out just for existing and she was never granted a moment of peace. Her mother died because of her. She watched the man she loved fall to the ground with blood trickling out of his head. She didn't deserve that.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Of course she didn't deserve it. That's not really the question. The truth is, most of us don't deserve what we get. Did Bellamy deserve the weight of the world on his shoulders from the age of seven? Did Clarke deserve to bury her best friend, to press a knife into the body of the boy she loved, to think she killed her father for years? There are questions you should be asking yourself. But Octavia doesn't want to ask questions. She wants to be heard.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Bellamy comes down a different person. He still wants her to love him, he still wants to make her happy, but he won't let her destroy him. That's okay. Octavia has plenty left to destroy.

-::-::-::-::-::-

In her mind, she's not destroying her people. She's saving her people. She told Jaha that she was a warrior, not a leader, but when everyone bowed down to her bloody form - well, Octavia would be lying if she said there wasn't a part of her that loved it.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She really thinks she is still in control until Bellamy's hand is covering her mouth, until the blackness inside her is crowding the edge of her vision and there's a tear rolling down the side of her face and she understands that there are people he loves more than her. It's too late to go back to a world where that was unthinkable.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She wakes up and she doesn't care that he's her brother. She wants his head on a fucking platter.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Until she doesn't. Until she sees him gagged next to Indra and Gaia and she remembers that first day in the dropship, his arms around her. He's her brother, he's her blood, and she has forgotten what that really means. Bellamy never has. She won't do what it takes to save him, but she'll tell him how to save himself. She's stopped questioning herself long ago so she's convinced that that's enough.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Is she relieved when they're all saved? A little. But is she disappointed too? And how many lies does she tell herself as she burns down Monty's algae farm with the claim that it's all for her people?

-::-::-::-::-::-

After all they went through, they deserve the valley. It belongs to her. It can't have been for nothing. But deserve is a funny word. If you become obsessed with it, then you'll never be satisfied.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She wakes up again in a field surrounded by the bodies of her people. Her brother is whispering that she killed them. His touch is no longer gentle. She told him he would become her enemy, but now she has become his. There is the smell of blood in the air, and there's that part of her - that part of her that might never go away - that doesn't even notice. Because she's used to it.

-::-::-::-::-::-

She's gone a long time without really thinking of Lincoln. If she wonders whether he'd be proud of her now, the answer becomes clear. She doesn't like that answer. Octavia destroys things she doesn't like. It's not until her brother says he wants her dead that she really understands she has nothing left. Her people are dead. Her brother hates her. Lincoln's been buried long ago. Indra is no longer behind her.

But she can still have this. She can still die for the right thing. Dying right. Is that the best she can ask for? She thinks it probably is. In another life, she dies there in a hail of gunfire, and it might not be the happiest ending she could've hoped for, but it's one of the better ones. Even then, in that life, there's an indescribable pain in Bellamy's heart as he watches her fall.

In this life, she's saved and Bellamy is spared that pain, but he receives another more familiar one.

-::-::-::-::-::-

Octavia Blake is a tragedy of her own making. Bellamy's still trying to save her. She's given up on saving herself. And if she can't save herself, then she's willing to take everyone down with her. But it's easy to forget that there was a time when she was just a girl who wanted nothing more than to feel the wind on her face. To have something that was just hers. What happened to that girl? Why did she let her go?

-::-::-::-::-::-

He doesn't tell her he loves her, and it manages to surprise her. It stings. But it's deserved. There's that word again. As she's sliding into the ice ("Kinda like going under the floor."), she wonders if she might wake up a different person and be able to start completely new, in a world where she's made no mistakes yet and her brother still loves her, and she's done nothing at all to destroy him. That would be nice.

-::-::-::-::-::-

(Can't you see her, though? Drinking coffee with a friend, running to class. Sneaking out of her window to meet up with another boy. Teasing her brother, getting drunk at a bar and letting him take her home, meeting a world that gives her kindness and gentleness where this world has only given her cruelty. A world where she doesn't have to sit in the dark and wonder if she is just a mistake. Can't you see her there?)

-::-::-::-::-::-

Who knows what she could have been in another world? But the tragedy of this life is that we don't get another world. It doesn't matter who we could have been. It only matters who we are. And we are responsible for whatever we become.

-::-::-::-::-::-

First one who touches the ground loses.


End file.
